Archive for December 17th, 2012

Mayan Apocalypse Countdown: We are in the home stretch on Planet Earth. and just 4 days remain until the 13th b’ak’tun ends, initiating the Mayan Apocalypse on December 21st. Tick, tock.

In the face of predestination, prophetic warnings, and probable destruction- prosecution of all possible prophylaxis is both prudent and proper. Indisputable inklings of illuminated ideations, irresistible and insidious, inspired me to inquire whether the Free and Accepted Masons could intervene or otherwise interfere with the oncoming interval of destruction.

Saturnalia was supposed to have been held on December 17 (ante diem xvi Kal. Ian.) from the time of the oldest Roman religious calendar, which the Romans believed to have been established by the legendary founder Romulus and his successor Numa Pompilius. It was a dies festus, a legal holiday when no public business could be conducted. The day marked the dedication of the Temple to Saturn in the Roman Forum in 497 BC.

By the late Republic, the celebration of Saturnalia had expanded to seven days, but during the Imperial period contracted variously to three to five days. Under Augustus, there was a three-day official holiday.[48] Caligula extended it to five.

December 17 was the first day of the astrological sign Capricorn, the house of Saturn, the planet named for the god. Its proximity to the winter solstice (December 25 on the Julian calendar) was endowed with various meanings by both ancient and modern scholars: for instance, the widespread use of wax candles (cerei, singular cereus) may refer to “the returning power of the sun’s light after the solstice”.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

December the seventeenth is another of those historical dates upon which the anniversary of several momentous events occur. In 546 AD- Rome was sacked by the Ostrogoths, and in 1398 Delhi fell to the armies of Timur.

In 1903- the Wright Brothers learned that men could fly if they were clever enough.

Looming loquaciously over the locus of 23rd street and Sixth Avenue, the Grand Lodge of the Masons and the group which inhabits it have been spoken about in four lengthy postings from way back in 2009.

The Aztec calendar stone, Mexica sun stone, Stone of the Sun (Spanish: Piedra del Sol), or Stone of the Five Eras, is a large monolithic sculpture that was excavated in the Zócalo, Mexico City’s main square, on December 17, 1790. It was discovered whilst Mexico City Cathedral was being repaired. The stone is around 12 feet (3.7 m) across and weighs about 24 tons.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

Filled with a series of questions which only those who know the truth of history might answer, your humble narrator journeyed to Manhattan and joined one of the free tours regularly offered by the group. The tour follows a twisting path, entering rooms with a right turn and exiting with a left, moving in weird diagonals throughout their building.

The guide recognized my need for guidance, and soon I was brought before the God of America. Brazen, the gaze of the eidolon bore into ones soul, an accusatory and knowing permanence of vision radiating from beneath carven brows. The greatest of the Masons would have been resolute and unflinching in the eye of any storm, let alone some silly Mayan Apocalypse.

The prophet is commemorated in the Coptic Church on the 23rd day of the Coptic month of Baramhat.

On the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar, the feast days celebrating St. Daniel the Prophet together with the Three Young Men, falls on December 17 (during the Nativity Fast), on the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers (the Sunday which falls between 11 and 17 December), and on the Sunday before Nativity. Daniel’s prophesy regarding the stone which smashed the idol (Daniel 2:34-35) is often used in Orthodox hymns as a metaphor for the Incarnation: the “stone cut out” being symbolic of the Logos (Christ), and the fact that it was cut “without hands” being symbolic of the virgin birth. Thus the hymns will refer to the Theotokos (Virgin Mary) as the “uncut mountain”

Daniel is commemorated as a prophet in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod together with the Three Young Men (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego), on December 17.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

Tribulations such as the forthcoming apocalypse and the embrace of such dubious reasoning would have embarrassed him. Rational men, Washington and his fellow conspirators against the Hanoverian throne knew the illuminable truth of things, that the world will continue on and on. His graven image assures and assuages.

Today, Washington’s face and image are often used as national symbols of the United States. He appears on contemporary currency, including the one-dollar bill and the quarter coin, and on U.S. postage stamps. Along with appearing on the first postage stamps issued by the U.S. Post Office in 1847, Washington, together with Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, and Lincoln, is depicted in stone at the Mount Rushmore Memorial. The Washington Monument, one of the best known American landmarks, was built in his honor. The George Washington Masonic National Memorial in Alexandria, Virginia, was constructed between 1922 and 1932 with voluntary contributions from all 52 local governing bodies of the Freemasons in the United States.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

Still, trepidation and timorous doubt haunt. The cogs and wheels of the universe are immutably in motion, spinning in uncertain ways. Quantum theory teaches that all things are possible at all times, and that the condition of observed reality depends upon the quality and perceptions of the observer.

The Mayan calendar has been right before in its predictions of cultural doom, for was it not prophecied that at a certain time on a certain day in a certain year that a bearded man would arrive at Veracruz and signal the destruction of their own civilization? And did Cortez not arrive at the appointed moment? It occurs to your humble narrator that we should not fear the arrival of Nibiru, but rather the imminence of Quetzalcoatl.

Q: Is there a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction?

A: Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.